Confucius lived during one of the most politically and socially turbulent periods in Chinese history, a time known as the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 B.C.). During this period, China, formerly united under the Zhou dynasty, was divided into small feudal states, which engaged in repeated cycles of civil wars and political turmoil. Mencius (3B:9) describes this period in this way: “After the death of Yao and Shun, the way of the Sages declined, and tyrants arose one after another.… When the world declined and the Way fell into obscurity, heresies and violence again arose. There were instances of regicides and parricide. Confucius was apprehensive and composed the Spring and Autumn Annals.”

The people of Confucius's time desired to build a peaceful and harmonious community but struggled to restore social order and maintain political stability. Unlike medieval Europeans, however, their struggle did not center on how to “limit the power of established political authority, or secure a protected realm for individual conduct free from arbitrary coercion” (O’Dwyer 2003, 43). For Confucius and his followers, the goal was a government that promoted and secured a peaceful life for the people. Because limiting the power of established political authority was not necessarily the end sought, Confucius and his followers did not advocate the rule of law as an effective solution to the problem of incessant political strife and social disorder facing the warring states. Their main concern was how to establish and maintain a meritocratic government capable of creating datong shehui, or a community of grand harmony (Yao 2000, 275).

Today, historically Confucian East Asia represents a region of democratic underdevelopment. Are Confucian cultural legacies the force preventing the powerful third wave of global democratization from sweeping most countries in Confucian East Asia? Have these legacies also prevented new and old democracies in the region from becoming well-functioning liberal democracies, as proponents of the Asian Values Thesis have argued? The research reported on in this book sought to explore these and other related questions concerning the prevalence and dissemination of Confucian legacies, as well as their connection to democratic and authoritarian politics from the perspective of the mass citizenry.

To this end, I began with a broad conceptualization of Confucianism and democracy, describing each as a multidimensional phenomenon. Defining Confucianism as a system of political and social ethics, I considered the proper modes of both social living and political governance that Confucianism advocates for the achievement of datong shehui, a community of grand harmony. Furthermore, I regarded Confucianism as a phenomenon covering the region of East Asia identified as historically Confucian East Asia and rejected the equation of Confucian values with Asian values, which the Asian Values Thesis has often implied.

Even two decades ago, few people expected popular collective action to become common or even “normal” in China. A variety of social groups, including pensioners, laid-off workers, peasants, urban homeowners, demobilized army officers, and people with disabilities, have mounted collective protests to the government. Indeed, when such groups have strong claims to make to the government, they can seldom find a better way than through collective petitioning. From the early 1990s to present, such activities were not just common; many of them were actually a central part of protracted struggles with the government. Through forceful and often persistent collective action, many “disadvantaged” social groups have exerted considerable influence on local policies.

Contentious authoritarianism, wherein a strong authoritarian regime accommodates widespread and routinized collective protests, is a very rare phenomenon. Even in the long history of China, which witnessed numerous rebellions and occasional waves of protests and social movements, it is hard to find a relatively long period when collective protests were so common and routine. To be sure, protests movements have been substantially institutionalized and normalized in some liberal democracies, which are called “social movement societies.” However, authoritarian regimes in general are still quite hostile to popular collective action, and the opening of political opportunity for mass mobilization in such societies tends to be very brief.

Routinized Social Protests

On the early morning of July 8, 2002, more than one hundred pensioners quietly gathered around the municipal government compound in City Y, Hunan Province. They laid wood planks and bricks at the entrance, and then several of them sat down; most others remained standing near the area. Although they did not shout anything, they displayed two huge banners of slogans, one of which requested, “Implement the central and provincial policy, and distribute the subsidy of 51 RMB.” They were pensioners from a bankrupt state-owned textile mill who suffered pension arrears, which was a common problem not only in Hunan Province but also in most other provinces in China. Not being particularly noisy, they nonetheless severely disrupted the operation of the government. Because they blocked the main entrance, no vehicle could enter or exit the government compound. Although some officials tried to persuade them to stop the blockade, no security guard or police officer was called to disperse them. The entrance remained essentially closed for five to six hours. Only after a “dialogue” between protest organizers and the municipal governmental officials did those gathered around the compound gate begin to disperse.

The protest in City Y is not an exceptional event. At the local government level, China has experienced a notable increase in social protests since the early 1990s. In Hunan Province in 2001, for instance, 9,213 collective petitioning events, defined as petitions delivered by five or more participants, took place in county-level governments or above. There were twenty-four participants on average in each event. In a number of such collective petition events, petitioners employed a variety of “troublemaking” tactics, such as demonstrations, sit-downs, and highway blockades.

September 1 is usually the first day of class for Chinese schools. On September 1, 2010, however, twelve recent elementary school graduates from Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, did not go to class in a middle school. Instead, they went to the municipal government offices to have their first class. Outside the government compound, they began to study an essay with the title, “Opening Doors for Yourself.” In the rain, they read loudly, “there is no door in this world that you cannot open, only if you persist.” Those schoolchildren were protesting a local education reform policy, which stipulated that students should be assigned to schools according to their residential address. Originally, they expected to go to the best middle school in the city because of their parents’ employers’ monetary contribution to the school. Suddenly deprived of this expected privilege, those most persistent twelve families found a very special way to “open the door.” Their protest was peaceful and hardly disruptive in any sense. However, it was clear to government officials, as well as to the petitioners themselves, that this was a method of petitioning with “troublemaking” tactics.

The previous chapter shows that Chinese petitioners have developed a strategic pattern, protest opportunism. “Troublemaking,” as an essential aspect of protest opportunism, is generally viewed by petitioners as indispensable for the efficacy of their struggle. This chapter will continue to probe into “troublemaking” tactics in a more systematic way, noting in particular the range of such tactics and their actual effectiveness. Because the range and effectiveness of protest tactics can reveal some essential features of the political system, this study of specific “troublemaking” tactics can help us further understand how the particular political structure in China since the 1990s has shaped petitioners’ behavior.

To explain the dynamics and strategic orientation of popular protests since the 1990s, we naturally look for factors of social and political change in the Reform Era. What have often been overlooked are some enduring elements of the regime that have also profoundly shaped popular collective action. This chapter will show how inherent contradictions of the PRC have played such an important role.

Such contradictions have been most clearly manifest in the xinfang system, one of the primary institutions for the CCP to handle popular claim-making activities. The design of this system is based on the mass line, which simultaneously emphasizes the concentration of political power to Party leaders and nonbinding consultation with the masses. As a consultative apparatus it has been designed to facilitate “managed participation,” which means that both the forms and effects of participation are under tight control by the Party-state. Ordinary people can signal their preferences to the state but are not supposed to exert pressure on it. It is up to state officials to decide how such preferences will influence policy making and implementation.

How do we account for the upsurge of collective protest in China since the early 1990s? It is impossible to understand this trend without analyzing the changing political structure surrounding claim making, especially the way in which state agents cope with claim-making activities. Patterns of state strategies – for example, the state’s propensity and capacity for repression – have long been regarded as a key aspect of the political opportunity structure that influences popular contention. In the Reform Era, the Chinese state has developed a particular repertoire of strategies for coping with popular contention: generally restrained repression with a goal of containment rather than deterrence, expedient concessions, practical persuasion, and prevalent procrastination. Such a pattern of state strategies make collective petitioning with “troublemaking” tactics a rational and even attractive choice: Such forms of social protests are not overly risky, often somewhat effective, and usually indispensable for their success.

Of course, this pattern of state strategies is itself a product of economic reforms and the sociopolitical transformations they have triggered. Thus this chapter will examine how two important processes in the Reform Era – the changes in state-society linkages and those in the state structure – have transformed the strategic repertoire that state agents use when responding to social protest.